1931: Riverside Drive and West 107th Street

By Caitlin Hawke

Neighbor Gil Tauber recently offered a walking tour of the latest segment of Riverside Drive to receive landmark status. The tour ended with the Schinasi Mansion on the northeast corner of Riverside Drive and West 107th Street. Constructed in 1909 for an illiterate tobacco barron of Turkish birth, Morris Schinasi, the house still stands and sold just two years ago for $14 million. Not to speculate, but it seems an equal sum has been poured into the renovation and restoration of this 12,000 square foot marble manse now nearing completion with gleaming balustrades and a traffic-stopping blue-green ceramic tile roof.

Among the tidbits of lore that surround this stately residence is the fact that it was designed by the architect of Carnegie Hall, WilliamTuthill. But juicier is the rumored tunnel beneath it supposedly stretching under Riverside Drive all the way to the Hudson for rum running. The money that Morris used to commission his home was earned in his business at 120th and Broadway where he pioneered the automation of cigarette manufacture thanks to his patented machine to roll cigarettes.